


Loneliness Might Be Something Everyone Needs But If You've Got Too Much You Start To Drown

by emily_420



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Food mentions, M/M, Mentions of violence & blood, no one needed this but here i am being foolish anyway, nsfw mentions, pretentious twenty-something tksg is alive and real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3686163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily_420/pseuds/emily_420
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takasugi didn't quite realise how many silences interspersed his days until they were filled with nonsense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loneliness Might Be Something Everyone Needs But If You've Got Too Much You Start To Drown

**Author's Note:**

> sweats this could have been so much longer and fully-formed but i just wanted to have a good time & if it got long i'd end up going all the way to emo town (which i avoid, usually) so. here it is. please don't take this seriously

It's eleven o'clock at night, or somewhere in that ballpark, and Takasugi has his back pressed against cold vaguely damp brick and teeth pressed against his neck, and he thinks, __this is so__ _ _cliché.__ Leaving the club with a promising stranger only to discover that they're bent in killing you, he means. He's got his hand firmly grasping the guy's braid, is keeping him from tearing him through his jugular, but not by much. He grins up at Takasugi, his fangs showing like they weren't earlier.

"Come on," he says. "Didn't you say you'd give me what I wanted?"

"I thought you meant-- I didn't mean like this," Takasugi says, tugging the guy's head a bit further back; he's still straining, still resisting, and Takasugi's getting increasingly weirded out, would probably panic if he wasn't drunk. "What are you gonna do, anyway? Drink my blood?"

He says it like he's joking, but he really wouldn't be surprised. The dude grins again. Takasugi yanks his head up to eye level, is met with wild blue eyes, dilated pupils. "The hell are you?"

"I'm Kamui."

" _What_ the hell are you?”

Kamui leans his head a bit closer. "I think you know."

Takasugi exhales, praying for strength, closes his eye briefly and immediately feels faint. "Okay, just, I won't do anything, so if I let you go just-- relax for a minute." Kamui looks at him carefully, nods, visibly retracts his fangs. Takasugi tips his head back in relief, lets his hand fall by his side. He takes a deep breath as Kamui rolls his head, cricking his neck. "Okay... so, this blood-drinking thing..."

"Yeah?"

“Will it kill me? Knock me out?”

“Neither, if you don't want it to.”

Takasugi laughs, thin and fake, knocks his head back against the wall of the alleyway and almost blacks out. “Great,” he says, eye shut, and feels teeth on his neck, lips curled into a smile.

+

Takasugi stumbles into his bathroom, bangs his shoulder on the doorway on the way in. His head is fuzzy, and so is his mouth; with a glazed feel in his eyes, he leans over the sink, splashes water over his face a few times, scrubbing with his hands. Kamui isn't in bed, but that's fine, Takasugi didn't expect anything. He passes his towel over his face, grabs his toothbrush, squeezes the toothpaste tube a bit too hard and is left with it overloaded. Dazedly, he stares down at the goopy mess for a long moment, shrugs and stick it in his mouth anyway. Mechanically brushing his teeth, Takasugi looks at himself in the mirror – his eyes look dead but that isn't new, and his neck is a mess, to say the least. As if puncture wounds aren't bad enough, the whole area around the bite is bruised, an ugly bluish purple. He doesn't really like looking at it, it's making him feel queasy, so he makes his arduous way to the kitchen instead, intending to put some coffee on.

All the blinds are shut, which strikes him as a bit odd, but then he sees Kamui standing at his stove, prodding at something with a quizzical look on his face. Takasugi stops in the doorway, stares at him, works himself up to ask, tiredly, “What are you doing?”

Kamui smiles at him, bright and dandy, as if he's not a fucked up creature of the night that lives off blood. “Making breakfast.”

 _Right..._ Takasugi thinks sarcastically, but outwardly just grunts, moves past Kamui as if he isn't there, fills the kettle and tries to put it on but misses the first time. The silence feels a bit hostile, especially with the artificial dark, so he says, “Do you eat? Like at all?”

“Of course.” Ah, he sounds offended. Takasugi leans against the counter and keeps an eye on him; Kamui's still prodding the – were those pancakes? - prodding the pancakes, waiting for them to be ready to flip, but now he's frowning a little. “It's not enough, though – I can't live off it – so I guess it's mostly for pleasure.” He twists around momentarily, smiles brightly, says, “Besides, the feeling of a full stomach is the best and it's hard to get that just from blood.”

“Do you, uh,” the fact that Kamui's an actual fucking vampire is sinking in more and more by the second as Takasugi wakes up, not to mention that he's a vampire _in Takasugi's apartment_ that Takasugi _fucked_ and, shit, this isn't that good, “...usually kill the person you drink from?”

Kamui's smile is getting eerie. “Well, unless it's mutual... You never know who they're gonna tell, you know.”

The kettle goes off. Kamui flips the pancakes and Takasugi sloshes the water into the coffee pot. Not looking at him, Takasugi says, “How do you know I won't say anything?”

Kamui laughs, gentle like a sunshower. He's a walking mass of contradictions, Takasugi thinks, not quite an enigma but certainly puzzling. “Naturally, I have no idea, but you don't like authority, right? Don't like social norms? I feel like you won't. But either way, I'm going to hang around for a while, so I'll be able to make sure.”

Coffee splashes Takasugi's hand as he pours it. “You'll what?” he asks, turning, but Kamui is still inscrutable, smiling blissfully. Takasugi likes him well enough, he's interesting and a bit fun, but you can't just invite yourself to live with someone, right?

“I'll live with you from now on.”

Maybe you can. Doesn't make it right.

“I don't have a spare room.”

“I'll sleep with you.”

Alright, should have seen that one coming. “What about bills? Groceries? You can't freeload.”

“I didn't say I would.” He's neatly stacking pancakes on two plates, flashes Takasugi another smile. “Look, I'm already helping.”

Takasugi sips his coffee, burns his tongue, and contemplates his loss.

+

“You've got a lot of these,” Kamui sats, pawing through Takasugi's CD collection. “Which one's your favourite?”

They're in Takasugi's room – probably _their_ room, now; it's a Thursday night and Takasugi is finding everything boring, again, as he lay on his stomach on his– their bed, dicking around on his phone. Kamui's spinning idly in the desk chair as he goes through the box. Takasugi reaches an arm out without stretching, says, “It's – stop for a second, gimme that.”

Kamui rolls closer with the box, proffers it. Takasugi props himself up, fishes out the album he has in mind, waves it in front of Kamui's nose. “That,” he said, “is my shit.”

He puts it in the CD player, an old thing that Takasugi isn't throwing out any time soon because it works and it's all he needs, and Takasugi asks over the crashing noise emotting from it, “How long can you go without drinking?”

“Sometimes two or three weeks, when I have a lot. But since I only got a little bit from you, I need more soon.” Takasugi mulls that over, wonders if it's strictly necessary to bite the neck _every time,_ but before he can voice the thought Kamui says, “This song is way too emo, Shinsuke.”

Which starts a different kind of battle.

(A pillow fight. It starts a pillow fight. Takasugi will later refuse to admit that he took part in such tomfoolery.)

+

It's a bright, crisp winter morning and they're going out for a walk, because Kamui doesn't know the neighbourhood and keeps getting lost, and as Takasugi locks the door behind him, he asks, “What's the umbrella for?”

“It's sunny.”

“That's not,” he drops his keys into his jacket pocket, “generally what you use an umbrella for.”

Kamui looks at him like he's missing something. Takasugi struggles to come up with a reason you'd need an umbrella on a fine day. “I'm a vampire...?” Kamui offers.

“Oh, the skin thing?” They start walking, down the dusty hall and down the concrete staircase, Kamui trailing behind Takasugi.

“Yeah. The sun hurts a _lot_. It's my mortal enemy.”

“You could be nocturnal.”

“I used to be.”

Out into the carpark, veering their course so they don't run into the batty landlord who never stops lecturing them about proper trash separation. Takasugi says, “What happened?”

Kamui's tone implies slight mocking. “I met you.”

Takasugi's not offended, snickers, says, “Isn't that _sweet_.”

Kamui trips him.

+

The cat stares up at them, eyes darting from one to the other, tail swishing. Takasugi stares back, hesitantly steps forward. It doesn't run, stays still on the low garden wall, and he stretches a hand out, brushes his fingers over its head. It presses its head up into his hand. _Success._

Kamui comes forward, too, tries to pet the cat, but its eyes go wide, and it scurries off in a blur of white and brown. “Look what you did,” Takasugi says.

“Can't help it. Must've been jumpy.”

“No, it's just you. It probably smelled the blood on you.”

“I do shower, you know.”

“How can I _not_ know when the water bill is fucking _skyrocketing_ – _”_

“I'm paying!”

“I know.”

They pass a young woman with short hair walking her dachshund, hear her voice call back to them, “Um, excuse me...”

They turn. She's looking at them, especially Kamui, oddly. “There's a zero per cent chance of precipitation for today, you know...”

“I know,” Kamui smiles, and her concerned look doesn't fall. Takasugi feels it on their backs even as they keep walking.

+

Living with a vampire is actually easier than Takasugi originally thought; there's never any natural light in the apartment but that's fine, it's not like he was ever a fan, and they can't eat anything with garlic in it, either, but that's also fine. What's probably not fine is that he's constantly got neck wounds, which are not only a pain to treat but also a bother to try and hide. Not that he's ashamed of them, but people tend to ask questions when you've got huge fucking bruises on your neck constantly. Mostly he just wears more scarves and reminds himself that the sex is worth it, that the feel of Kamui, his presence, him filling the cracks in Takasugi's life is more than enough to make up for the rest.

+

Takasugi gets home later than he'd intended from work, drops his messenger bag on the floor and his ass on the couch. Kamui's sitting cross-legged in front of the TV unit, something in his lap, and when Takasugi wearily waves at him Kamui smiles sheepishly back. Takasugi is immediately suspicious.

“What,” he says.

Kamui holds up the cracked remains of Takasugi's favourite video game. Takasugi stares at him blankly, shakes his head, gets up. “Shinsuke–” Kamui starts, but he's already left the room.

Later, Takasugi comes out of the bathroom, is drying his hair when Kamui calls, upside down in an armchair, “Shinsuke, what's for dinner?”

Takasugi looks at him, looks at the blood rushing to his face, looks at his innocent eyes concentrating on the game he's playing on his phone, looks at his poor abused game on the coffee table. He says, flat and emotionless, “Italian.”

“I'm sorry!” Kamui cries as he leaves the room.

+

Takasugi's lugging the groceries up the stairs. They've been buying a lot since Kamui moved in, since apparently he eats the same amount as a decent-sized family, but Takasugi still obstinately refuses to do more than one trip from his car to the apartment. That Kamui is having an infuriatingly easy time of it behind him is not helping anything. That he can see their landlord approaching them down the hall is also not, in any way, positive.

“Hello, young men,” she says, taking no regard for the clear strain Takasugi is under. “Still separating your trash properly? You remember that combustable trash goes out on–”

“Tuesday, I know,” Takasugi says with a pained smile. She eyes his eyepatch with no attempt to conceal her discomfort. “Then if you'll excuse us–”

“You should really,” she says, loudly, over him, “tell your visitors to be quieter. They're banging around and causing trouble.”

“What – yeah, sure. Alright. See you later.”

Kamui and Takasugi share a look. Kamui goes in first, and over his shoulder Takasugi sees a pair of weirdos in his living room. One of them, with long, sleek dark hair, is browsing the DVD collection, while the other one – are those rat-tails? Ew – is flipping through the pile of unopened mail on the coffee table. They look up at Kamui and Takasugi as they walk in. Kamui drops his bags on the floor. The thud echoes.

Rat-tails rushes over, puts himself between them in a way that looks like he's trying to shield Kamui. He's holding a cross up, sort of waving it at Takasugi, saying, “So you're the vampire who lives here, huh?”

Takasugi wants to laugh, but quells it; he can see the dagger in the dude's belt and he doesn't feel like adding to his injuries. “I think there's a mistake,” he says instead. Dark-hair is behind Kamui too, now, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. They've honestly got no idea.

“You're responsible for the five deaths in the last two months, aren't you?” Rat-tails says, aggressive, and so very, very wrong. “On behalf of the–”

Kamui presses his teeth against the side of Rat-tails' neck, says, lips brushing his skin, “You'll what?”

Takasugi's not jealous but he is annoyed and he does want to put the bags down already. Kamui looks up at him, blue eyes the same as the day they met, catches dark-hair's strike before it hits him, says, “Shinsuke, do you mind–”

“Don't make a mess,” Takasugi says, walks past the group struggle with the shopping, and hears muffled screams from the kitchen. Their landlord is really gonna be pissed now.

 


End file.
